Effectiveness of modified Manchester triage flow model regarding patients’ waiting time

Abstract

Triage is a French word meaning to sort or to choose. Triage is therefore a process whereby each patient is prioritized amongst the randomly approaching patients in the Accident & Emergency Department/rescue area for emergency care ( Zachariasse et al., 2021). Sorting of patients into priority categories is often performed by an experienced doctor/surgeon or a senior health professional/nurse. The triage nurse/health professional shall quickly assess the patient’s condition, interpret the clinical features and then exercise interventions in the early phase to prevent deterioration and death (Soler‐Sanchis, Martínez‐Arnau, Sánchez‐Frutos, & Pérez‐Ros, 2022). The objective of the triage is to defer a patient who can wait, while give priority to those who are in imminent danger, and whose life can be saved by a timely intervention (Costa, Nicolaidis, Gonçalves, Souza, & Blatt, 2020). The Manchester Triage System is used to maintain a consistent method of prioritising and assessing patients, allowing for thorough audits and improved patient safety. Emergency departments (EDs) are seeing more difficulties globally as a result of an increase in patients and an inability to adjust capacity to meet demand. This is against a background of decreasing hospital resources. Consequently, ED crowding has become a great, international phenomenon (Zachariasse et al., 2021). The Manchester Triage System is one of Europe's most widely used triage systems, considering five levels to prioritise patients in the ED: level 1 (red), immediate; level 2 (orange), very urgent; level 3 (yellow), urgent; level 4 (green), standard; and level 5 (blue), non-urgent (Brutschin, Kogej, Schacher, Berger, & Gräff, 2021) Patient flow model refers to the movement of patients through health care settings involves the medical care, physical resources, and internal systems needed to get patients from the point of admission to the point of discharge while maintaining quality and patient/provider satisfaction (Tlapa et al., 2020). The major facility for urgent medical difficulties is a hospital emergency department (ED), which is a complex system with erratic demands.